The Lemurian Era

According to Steiner, originally there was no
solid matter at all; and then the Earth and solar system slowly condensed
through the stages of first fire, then air, then liquid, then finally
solid matter. Even as late as the early Lemurian period, the world
was still not as solid as it is now, and the Earth and moon were a single
large mass. According to Steiner, "Ancient Lemuria was a continent
between the present continents of Asia, Africa, and Australia, and was
inhabited by a very different humanity." Of course, the idea of Lemuria
and the Lemurian Root Race comes originally from Blavatsky, who in turn
was influenced by the 19th century Darwinist Ernst Haekel, who had suggested
a hypothetical continent to explain the distribution of lemurs! Thus
obsolete science forms the foundation for Theosophical, Anthroposophical,
and New Age "fact".

Now, according to Steiner, early Lemurian man was a sort of only semi-physical
amorphous or jellyfish-like aquatic form, not yet possessed of individual
consciousness. Interestingly, the whole environment and picture
of the organisms (nominally called "man") reminds one of imaginative
scenes of life on Jupiter postulated by some scientists a decade or so
ago. It was supposed by those scientists that jellyfish-like
forms could exist and drift in the thick and ocean-like atmosphere of Jupiter.
Now the search for life has shifted to speculation regarding oceans on
Europa beneath vast layers of ice. The tremendous magnetioc field
generated by Jupiter would however make any organic life on that moon unlikely.

It was only during the Lemurian Era, Steiner claims, that the
moon seperated from the Earth. As Steiner explains it, as the
earth-moon body became denser, "the human substance now to be found there
became too hard and ligneous to enable them to incarnate." (Luke
82) Fewer and fewer human souls were powerful enough to utilize the hardening
earthly bodies. Finally only "one main pair retained sufficient strength
to master the stubborn substance and to incarnate on the Earth through
the period when the Moon was separating from the Earth." (Luke 83).

"Spiritual Science independently confirms the Adam and Eve account of
the bible." Paul E. Chu exclains (Life Before Birth, Life on Earth,
Life After Death, p. 98). Which makes you wonder at the rational
capacities of certain Anthroposophists. (First, they take Steiner's
word as goiospel truth. Then, they take the Gospels as gospel truth!
;-)

"It became necessary to remove the densifying forces in the
earth-moon which was still in a warmth-vapor-fluidic state...Towards the
middle of Lemuria, the seventh leading Spirit of Form, at a tremendous
sacrifice of not continuing his normal development on the sun with those
of His Hierarchy, "chose another task for the benefit of humanity. This
being took out the densest of the earth-moon forces, together with the
matter connected with those forces and separated our moon out, leaving
our present earth."

"This event caused a great revolution. The objects which surround man
lost a great part of their heat. These objects thereby entered into a coarser
and denser substantiality. Man must live in this cooler environment." (Cosmic
Memory p.136).

Following the ejection of the moon the Earth was able to attain a more
solid form. In this respect at least, Steiner's position is the opposite
of Blavatsky's. According
to Blavatsky the moon is actually the "corpse" of the Earth from the preceeding
cosmic cycle, and hence much older than the Earrh. According to Steiner
the moon is much younger than the Earth, and was thrown off from it.
This is actually a now-disproved theory of lunar formation that was popular
in Steiner's day, hence we see how his supposed "clairvoyance"
simply reflects very often his own understanding of the world, rather than
being an objective analysis of it.

Paul E. Chu explains (Life Before Birth, Life on Earth, Life After
Death, pp.99-100) that

"The separated moon forces would have hardened the human entities
and would have prevented his development in the right way. This Spirit
of Form thus works on man from outside since then, just as the sun beings
do. This Being is the Elohim known as Jehovah in the Old Testament. Jehovah
is the Regent of the Moon who guides mankind's development from that sphere."

Interestingly, Ann Ree Colton refers
to Jehovah as the "race lord" who is associated with the Swadhisthana
chakra and the Moon, and who stirs up wars and stuff every so often.
Her association of Jehovah with the Moon seems to indicate influence from
either Steiner or Theosophy (in any case Theosophical concepts are marked
in her work, and her description of the aura is astonishingly like
that of Leadbeater).

"After the separation of the moon, substantiality increases....During
the Lemurian epoch, man assumed a form which made it possible for him to
develop his fourth principle, the Ego."

The Ego was the gift to humanity of the six leading Spirits of Form
who had made the sun their sphere of activity. They sacrificed their substance,
the Cosmic Ego, and gave man a "drop" of this ego. The totality of these
six Sun Beings is called in our age, CHRIST."

"Before the separation of the moon with its densifying forces, no ego
could live in the human bodies on earth."

Here we have a Gnostic and Manichaean concept, the "Divine Spark" as an
emanation from teh Gods or fromn a Divine being who incarnated in Earth.
In Kabbalah likewise, especially the Zohar, the Neshamah or Divine Soul
is a spark of Binah, the Divine Understanding.

There is an inconsistency in Steiner's teachings in that he elsewhere
refers to the Cosmic Christ giving
man an individual ego only with the incarnation and crucifiction of Jesus.
Such discrepancies are very common in his teachings.

"After the moon separated there is a transformation of the
human form. Those organs which previously had served for nutrition and
reproduction are transformed into organs of speech and thought. Man has
become upright." (Cosmic Memory pp.136-7)

Hermann Poppelbaum and other Anthroposophistst
make the interesting suggestion that the first appearance of bipedalism
in animals on Earth (among Triassicthecodont
reptiles) was actually an Earthly reflection of the ethereal man standing
upright!

After the separation of the Moon, earth as we know it today began. Because
of this, the Anthroposophist E. Haegmann identifies the second half of
the Lemurian epoch with the Precambrain and early Paleozoic eras, rather
than (as Poppelbaum does) the Mesozoic era. This results in a time-scale
of almost Young Earth Creationist minisculeness.

Steiner taught there was a reversal in the appearance of the kingdoms
on earth "After the moon's withdrawal, the entire plan of evolution appears
in reverse." (John 61). Anthroposophical cosmology asserts
that man (or mineral man) appeared first on Old Saturn, then animals came
into existence in a rudimentary stage on Old Sun, the plant kingdom was
added on Old Moon, and the mineral kingdom precipitated in the Earth condition.
But now the mineral kingdom revivified first, then the plant kingdom, then
the animal kingdom, and finally the human kingdom.

The animal souls united with the earthly bodies too soon, as the bodies
were too hardened and had not been sufficiently revivified by the sun forces,
and the animals became fixed in their forms. The astral
qualities or instincts worked in a moulding way on the astral currents,
then on rarified air, then on the cloud-like-fluidic substances. Finally
when the earthy materials precipitated out, the forms became fixed because
the instincts united with the physical bodies. The astral qualities and
instincts determined the physical form of each animal species. Each
animal species reveals an inner quality is expressed in its form. Into
these forms had been built all the wisdom in the Old Moon period by the
Spirits of Wisdom. The astral qualities were already present on Ancient
Moon before there was solid matter. But only on earth is there the solid
state of matter and this permeated the astral forms to produce the visible
animal species. These astral qualities, according to Steiner, are in reality
exudations of the human astral qualities developed on the Old Moon stage.
They take on separate physical form, thus freeing human beings for higher
development.

The animal kingdom, therefore, are those beings which take out from
humanity numerous retarding astral qualities and concentrate them within
the animal species. Mankind therefore, owes to the animal kingdom the possibility
of developing to
higher stages unhindered by all the hampering, retarding astral qualities
precipitated out by the animal kingdom.

Steiner's explanation of the incarnation of the animal kingdom is interesting,
because it forms the basis of a sort of Goethian zoology, or zoosophy,
brilliiantly elaborated by Hermann
Poppelbaum.

Steiner describes at some length the society developed by the late Lemurian
human beings. These returning souls, who had previously sought refuge
in the various the planetary spheres, grouped themselves in oracles known
by the names of their planets, as Saturn Mysteries, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury,
and Venus. Steiner explains that all these were found in the ancient
world and were the beginning of the modern races. This of course
makes very difficult the arguments of those who have tried to integrate
the
Anthroposophical and Scientific timescales. Generally the Lemurian
is identified with the Mesozoic
(and sometimes also the Paleozoic)
eras. We know of course that no human fossils of any sort have been
found from these relatively early stages in the history life. Theosophical
and Anthroposophists writers, like Poppelbaum and others, argue this is
because man (unlike animals and plants) had not yet materialised at this
stage, but still continued in the etheric
plane. This however is not what Steiner says. Whilst Poppelbaum's
account of the Lemurian era is interesting and imaginative (if quite
dated as regards his conception of dinosaurs), Steiner's description of
the same era reveals a completely different reality. Steiner refers
to fantastical and ridiculous elements, such as the degenerating forces
spawned by the developing human consciousness that created great fire storms
and destroyed the continent of Lemuria. (this seems a rehash of the
theosophical myth of teh Atlanteans destroying their continent through
mis-use of psychic powers). Seen from this perspective, as a sort
of imaginative, mythopoetic, and dream--like consciousness, Steiner's Lemurian
Era is rather more reminiscent of transpersonal psychologist
Ken
Wilber's "Typhon" or "Body-Ego" stage of psychogenesis,
indicating that both are tapping into
the same psycho-mythic reality

The Lemurian
age as the Late Paleozoic and Mesozoic Era, according to Dr Hermann
Poppelbaum